A good piece in the Press Association, carried by The Guardian, about the former cricketer Marcus Trescothick and how he manages the severe anxiety that ended his test match career at the age of 30. His issues were made worse by being away from home and he says this: “You find methods of understanding and then coping, and then gradually working more and more with therapists I have been able to get to a point where I have been able to say: ‘OK, we’ve done that trip, what’s the stepping stone to doing the next one, and then that one and the one after that?’” Obviously, I know nothing about Trescothick since I don’t know him and have never met him, but I am impressed by what I would describe as his bravery in talking publicly about his illness. By and large, it is A Good Thing, but it raises other issues. What works for one person doesn’t, or can’t, work for someone else.
Trescothick is brave because, despite suggestions to the contrary, often from people who don’t have the first idea about attitudes to mental health, it remains a taboo subject. It took me three quarters of a lifetime to ‘come out’ with my own issues and when I did the response was mixed. My civil service managers were generally kind, thoughtful and sympathetic. Other managers, later in life while I was working for the evil British Red Cross and the dysfunctional brain injury charity Headway, were less so, in the case of the former the exact opposite of kind, thoughtful and sympathetic. You don’t know what the reaction from people will be when you admit to mental health issues and that’s why I call someone in the public eye, like Trescothick, brave. He “manages” his mental health – there is often no cure – and appears to live a “normal” life. Therapy, it appears, works. But who is therapy for?
The PA piece doesn’t address the issue of who is delivering the therapy. I’ve done the NHS therapy – oh dear, here comes that word again – journey and frankly there isn’t one. A few weeks of counselling if you are lucky and maybe a mindfulness course but that’s it. As I have said many times before, between a few weeks of counselling and actually being sectioned under the mental health act in the NHS there lies nothing. Which means that for the vast majority of mental people who sit somewhere in the middle of, say, depression and anxiety and severe clinical depression, well good luck with that. My guess is that Trescothick has been using the services of a private therapist.
Now, despite my opposition to the very thought of the vultures and parasites of the private medical sector making money off the back of people being ill, I would not criticise someone with the necessary resources paying for treatment. If you are suffering from chronic anxiety or depression and you have a few bob sloshing around, why would you not spend it? Poor mental health is life-destroying and it’s even more destroying when you know you are destined to spend a lifetime essentially fending for yourself and relying on drugs. If I was loaded and could afford long term private therapy, I’m afraid my principles would turn to dust.
This is not, I promise, a dig at anyone. Since it became acceptable, at least to an extent, to be open about mental health, we have learned about all manner of celebrities and sports stars coping with poor mental health. The England cricket captain, the great Ben Stokes has had his demons, too, he has taken medication and says he speaks regularly to “a mental health professional”. I would absolutely love to have the option of speaking to a mental health professional but in my world I can’t get beyond a telephone conversation with an NHS “nurse practitioner” with responsibility for mental health who can offer me literally nothing. (The last time I sought help for my depression, I actually spoke on the phone with a GP I had never before met. After I had explained how I was feeling, his response was – and I am not making this up – that I was taking too much by way of anti-depressant medication and he would be halving it. I wanted to ask “How will cutting my medication by 50% improve my depression?” but it was at that point I gave up. What was the point?)
Trescothick manages his anxiety with professional assistance. Many of us try to manage our own issues with our own strategies. This might be by changing the way we live, by not doing the things we used to do and staying in what we see as a safe zone. It’s not life as we know it, Jim, but it’s a version of it. I’m a mental shadow of the person I was before my British Red Cross induced mental breakdown of 2017 but, as Elton John once put it, “Ahm steel staindin'”. Just.
There was a time when ornery folk could access NHS help with conditions like anxiety and depression. I remember seeing an actual Mister, a consultant psychiatrist, at Southmead Hospital when I was particularly unwell a couple of decades ago, enjoying, if that’s the right word, outpatient treatment. Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago.
I very much welcome it when famous people reveal their own mental health problems. Part of that is that we remember that we are not alone. Even the royals acknowledge that it’s good to talk, promoting as they do the Heads Together charity. It’s not much, but, as we say, better than nothing. My advice, for what it’s worth, is that it’s good to talk because that can be the start of dealing with the illness (and it is an illness). Sadly, you can stuck at the start because, alas, the start is often the end. Depressing, isn’t it?
Living with poor mental health beats the alternative any day of the week. There may not be a cure for everyone, but as Trescothick explains, poor mental health can be managed and even I manage to manage mine for most of the time. I hope the new government takes the subject seriously because the governments of the last 14 years certainly didn’t. Pay for it if you have to (and can afford to) and always talk to someone you trust and believe in. And if you can, work for the England Cricket Board and not the British Red Cross. If I’d done that, I might be in a different and better place.
